Actor Donald Glover, of the highly funny -- and annoyingly delayed, in terms of its return for a fourth season -- NBC show Community, is technically an example of that odd creature, the actor-turned-rapper. (For some reason, rappers-turned-actors seem to fare a bit better. See: Law & Order, Special Victims Unit.)

Maybe because comedians must be as quick of tongue as MCs, or maybe because his alter-ego career as rapper Childish Gambino (the name, he told Jimmy Fallon on the air, came from an online Wu-Tang Clan name generator) has been contemporaneous with Community’s success, Mr. Glover has managed to avoid most pitfalls of hopping from one medium to the other. On the mic, he’s witty, self-assured and a keen mimic, sending up pop-rap conventions as you might expect a professional funnyman would. Beyond that, on his most recent and well-realized mixtape, Royalty – which featured guests like the RZA, Beck, and Bun B – he makes a decent case for Childish Gambino as a rapper unto himself.